What is MCP registry?

An MCP registry is a directory that indexes MCP servers so they can be discovered and installed without scouring GitHub. As the ecosystem grew past a handful of reference servers into thousands of community and vendor offerings, finding the right server, and trusting it, became its own problem. Registries answer this by collecting structured metadata per server: name, vendor, what tools it exposes, how to install it (the stdio command or remote URL), required environment variables, and links to source. There is an official open MCP registry that aims to be a canonical, API-accessible index, alongside many curated catalogs and marketplaces run by hosts and third parties. For users, a registry is the browse-and-pick layer; for hosts and agents, it is an API that enables one-click or even automatic installation. This very directory is a curated registry: each server page distills the install descriptor, tool list, and configuration so you can go from discovery to a working connection quickly.